


Flaw in My Code

by bohnem990



Series: You Were Red [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic, Asexual, Asexual Character, Asexual Tyler Seguin, Greyromantic, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6694696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bohnem990/pseuds/bohnem990
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s why Tyler is late for practice. That’s why Tyler is healthy scratched the last game of the season. That’s why Jamie doesn’t talk to Tyler before he leaves to have surgery and Tyler leaves to go home. </p><p>Because it’s not okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flaw in My Code

**Author's Note:**

> This verse is based off the tumblr post where you get tally marks on your wrists when you fall in love. Red mean unrequited, black means the love is returned, and a scarred mark means they’ve died. (I’ve added another mark color that hasn’t been introduced yet, but when it is all hell is going to break loose.)
> 
> Hockey RPF needs more asexual and aromantic representation, so I’ve chosen to bring it in the form of Tyler Seguin. It’s not heavily addressed here, rather than integrated as part of the fic, because I feel like it’s not a big deal. I, personally, am greyromantic asexual and AO3 definitely needs more representation. So, here you go. 
> 
> The title of this fic comes from Halsey’s _Gasoline_ and damn if this song doesn’t fit this fic then I don’t know what does.

Tyler gets his first tally when he's 20 years old; he puts it there himself. He's been in Dallas for three days and it takes him four tattoo artists for him to find one who will do the work. It's taboo and the artist looks at him with pity the whole session. 

It's bad energy, Tyler's artist says, a smoke house of incense through the air as he mixes the black ink to pigment like a true tally mark would. Tyler doesn't want it to be obvious, what he's done. He has a reputation to uphold, is expected to love fast and hard and with his whole heart. 

Tyler has never been in love, clearly. 

The artist puts the first mark down on Tyler's left wrist. Mark placement runs in families, right or left wrist. The Seguin marks always appear on the right, so Tyler isn't royally fucking himself over. He's smarter than that. 

He gets four marks in total. Three red and one black. The black tally is the third, where Tyler can wax a poetic story about some girl he dated in high school and it didn't work out. It's a lie; the whole thing is a lie. 

Tyler has never been in love and Tyler doesn't love himself. He works out, hours in the gym to hone a body women fall over themselves to touch, but Tyler can't look at himself in the mirror. He doesn't know who the boy staring back at him is, he's not sure he ever did. He thought he knew who he was and he thought he knew what he stood for, and then he grew up. He grew from a boy to a man whose skin was too tight and whose lungs could never get enough air. People wanted him to fit into boxes and damn did Tyler try, but he just couldn’t do it. He was painfully aware that finding his place was going to be a longshot.

\---

Jamie has had one black tally mark on his right wrist since he was five years old; it's for Jordie. He has one red one right next to it that appeared when he was fifteen. That mark belongs to Chelsea Carlstrom who lived next door to them and her blonde hair was never out of place. 

Jamie doesn't understand soul marks, mostly he thinks they're a lie. 

The black mark on his wrist, without a doubt, belongs to Jordie. His brother’s own wrist holds that same first mark. But Jamie is not in love with Jordie. First, that's wrong and second, that's just not how it is. He loves Jordie like a continuation of himself, like the best part of him that doesn't smile back in the mirror because Jordie is holding onto it. 

The red mark, Jamie knows it belongs to Chelsea because he remembers the summer he thought he fell in love with her. He was fresh fifteen and she smiled at him and his heart almost stopped. But when Jamie thinks back on it he knows he wasn't in love with her. Past that first time, her smile didn't change his life and he didn't trip over sentences speaking to her and he would not have spent his last dollar chasing after the ice cream truck for her. Jamie was not in love. 

So you see, Jamie doesn't put a lot of stock into soul marks and he doesn't think he'll ever earn one for real. 

\---

There’s something distinctly romantic about Dallas. It’s a noose around Tyler’s neck when he walks into the locker room for the first time after a month of existing solely around the Benn brothers. The Benn brothers who unapologetically have black tallies for each other and not anyone else. They make Tyler feel normal, like he’s not the Boston outcast. 

The locker room is different. He’s twenty, walking into a room filled with old marrieds. They’re happy and in healthy relationships, wearing their last black marks with pride and shoving phones into teammates faces to try and one up each other on who’s the goddamn happiest. 

Tyler feels his chest constrict. He’s going to suffocate. 

He grabs for his wrist, fingers searching for butter soft leather to soothe him, but he remembers he’d gone into this clean. He decided to be normal, to stop explaining away his wrist cover because wrist covers were for people like Sidney Crosby. 

Jamie’s hand comes down on Tyler’s shoulder and he feels himself settle back into his body. Jamie smiles at him and when Tyler tips his head to smile back at him, he catches sight of the lone black tally on Jamie’s wrist. Maybe it’s going to be okay after all. 

\---

It is okay. 

It’s okay the first time they play Boston when Jamie sits next to him on the flight and on the bus, their bodies huddled together as they share a pair of headphones and watch Monster Fish. It’s okay when they barely make it into the playoffs and then crash and burn on the way out. It’s okay when they never make the playoffs again. It’s okay when Jamie goes to Sochi and Tyler goes to Cabo for the Olympics and they both burn through a ridiculous amount of international minutes texting whenever Jamie has a free minute. It’s okay when Jamie tells Tyler mid season in 2015 that he’s going to have surgery when it’s all over. It’s okay when Tyler gives Jamie massages and makes sure he puts on Icy Hot and lays with ice on his hip after ever game. 

It’s okay, until suddenly it’s not. 

That’s why Tyler is late for practice. That’s why Tyler is healthy scratched the last game of the season. That’s why Jamie doesn’t talk to Tyler before he leaves to have surgery and Tyler leaves to go home. 

Because it’s not okay. 

He wakes up the morning of the game at six am because his right wrist is on fire. It feels like someone dumped a pot of scalding water on his wrist and the flames are licking up his arm all the way to the ball of his shoulder. His alarm isn’t set to go off for another hour, but Tyler jumps out of bed so quickly he jams his pinky toe on his night stand. This morning is not going well. 

The fact that his bathroom is pitch black calms him and Tyler takes a few minutes to lean on the counter and steady his breathing. 

When Tyler flicks the lights on he nearly screams. There’s a red tally on his right wrist and his skin still feels like it’s on fire. “Fuck!” Tyler swears and slams his fist down on the stupid granite countertops his decorator told him would give the room character; bathrooms don’t need character. 

Tyler knows who this mark is for. 

He’s not prepared for the way his stomach swoops, wants to throw up as he turns on the tap and places his burning wrist under the icy water. He stands there for a long time and tries not to cry. 

No one ever warned him it would hurt like this, mind and body. It’s not supposed to burn, you’re not supposed to curse the person to put the mark there or stand with your arm under icy cold water for twenty minutes in order to feel human. His sophomore year health teacher had told the class that when a mark came it most people didn’t notice it all all, that unless they had the habit of checking their wrists or someone else told them, they wouldn’t know right away. There was no euphoria that came with falling in love aside from the mark on your wrist. Tyler kind of liked that idea, that love wasn’t any special feeling he was missing. 

Mrs. Fransin never warned him it would feel like hell. She never warned him that it would match his feeling on love, that he would want to drown instead of swim. 

By the time Tyler pulls his hand from under the water the burning is gone. He wonders if he can tattoo the rest of his wrist to the base of his hand to hide it. Tyler had left the space unmarred so if a tally came in he would know. But he doesn’t want this mark, he never wanted _this_ mark. 

The shower warms him and the coffee he forces himself to drink is too hot that it scalds his tongue. He gets some sick satisfaction from the fact. Tyler putters around his living room straightening random things until he catches sight of the clock on the cable box and he realises what he’s done. 

He’s going to be fucking late for practice. He hasn’t intentionally been late for practice since he was on the Bruins and Tyler’s version of self harm had been causing his own healthy scratch, taking away from himself the one thing that kept him going. He hasn’t felt like this since he was a teenager. Fuck. 

Jamie doesn’t speak to him when Tyler shows up to the rink. He doesn’t suit up, he knows how this goes by now. When Lindy scratches him, he doesn’t fight it, no one does. The disappointment in the air is palpable, Tyler’s hand goes to clutch at the Rolex he’d secured around his right wrist after his shower and leans against the boards. He’s going to be here for his team, even if Jamie won’t look at him. Thank God Jamie won’t look at at him. 

\---

Tyler doesn’t talk to Jamie before his surgery, or after, or while he’s recovering. Tyler goes home to Canada and panics instead. He spends the first few weeks of summer spending time with his family and going to clubs with his friends and wearing his Rolex all the fucking time. 

His mother smiles at him with pity in her eyes when she spies his left wrist, fake marks emblazoned for his entire family to see. They all know, of course, because they all have real ones. Cadance has had one since she was eighteen and Cassidy has one shiny and new that she shows off at family dinner the first night Tyler is home. Tyler excuses himself from the table mid meal and locks himself in his room. 

He resolutely does not call Jamie. 

Tyler doesn’t call Jamie when he goes to BioSteel camp either. Instead he meets Connor McDavid, prodigal hockey son, and tapes his right wrist up citing injury prevention when they ask. Tyler has never injured his wrists in his life, but the rest of the players at camp don’t need to know that. 

Tyler still doesn’t call Jamie. He doesn’t deserve to. 

When Tyler was fourteen he got his first girlfriend, Macy Briggs from homeroom. She was the most popular girl in school and she shoved her wrist in Tyler’s face at a party and said the red tally on her wrist belonged to him. Tyler swooned. They dated the entire school year, but Tyler never got her mark no matter how many times they kissed. Macy broke up with him in the summer and cried a lot when it happened. 

Then he met Tyler Brown and if Tyler was going to love anyone it was going to be Brownie. Except it wasn’t Brownie. Tyler loved him, but he didn’t love him like that. Tyler wanted to curl up in his warmth and steal his sweatshirts because they smelled like him. He wanted to play hockey with him and meet his family and hold hands when they watched movies. Brownie got Tyler’s tally but Tyler never got Brownie’s. 

In Boston, there was Brad Marchand whose personality was as big as his nose. Brad taught Tyler to go big or go home, to drink like vodka was water, and to party like a rockstar. Between being high on making it in the big show and going out to the club every night after a game, Tyler made a home in Brad’s bed. At first it was to sleep, because it was easier to crash there than it was to figure out in his drunken state how the fuck he was supposed to get home. Until suddenly it wasn’t, suddenly it was making out in Brad’s bed and peeling their shirts off and touching each other in the dark. Suddenly it was Tyler having sex for the first time in his life and Brad kissing him while he came. Tyler always felt dirty in the morning. Instead of thinking about it he drank the hair of the dog and took a shot before practice. When they won the Stanley cup Brad tackled him in the locker room and screamed that he loved him. There was a red tally on Brad’s wrist and Tyler couldn’t breathe. 

Tyler told himself that Dallas would be different, that this time he wasn’t going to break anyone’s heart by making them fall in love with him. He wasn’t going to have sex with anyone and feel like he had to scrub his skin raw to feel clean again. He wasn’t going to get drunk so he could look at himself in the mirror and he definitely wasn’t going to wear his wrist cover. He was just going to lie about that instead. 

The only heart Tyler ends up breaking is his own. 

He has words for what he is. Greyromantic asexual. Tyler is expected to love fast and love hard and to have women falling into bed with him. Tyler doesn’t want any of that. Tyler wants a nice queerplatonic relationship like the one he had with Brownie when they were teenagers but didn’t have the words for it. Tyler didn’t believe he could fall in love, he didn’t even want to. 

\---

Jamie calls him when Patrick Sharp is traded. 

“Come home,” Jamie says when Tyler swipes to answer his iPhone. Tyler feels like he can breathe again. 

“Okay,” Tyler agrees, and he can hear Jamie release the breath he’d been holding, like he was scared of Tyler’s answer. 

Tyler’s tally is still red, but maybe it’s going to be okay. 

\---

The Stars drop seven of the first nine games. Tyler has learned not to be disappointed by this fact, because this is just Stars Hockey. When he was traded, Stanley Cup ring only one year old, Tyler reconciled the fact that he would most likely never win one again. Despite Jamie winning the Art Ross without Tyler, and despite some major trades this season, things don’t look any different. Jamie’s hips don’t hurt and Tyler’s wrist stays taped and things are almost normal. 

Then the Stars win eight out of the next nine games and Tyler feels like flying. 

Jamie slams into him after they win against San Jose at home at the end of October and as soon as Tyler’s arms wrap around Jamie's shoulders, smile blazing across his face, Tyler’s wrist sets on fire. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth against the pain. When he opens them Jamie looks concerned. “You okay, bud?” Jamie asks. 

Bud. 

Tyler wishes the ice would melt and drown him. “Fucking fantastic,” Tyler grins instead, “On top of the fucking world, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees. 

\---

When they go out that night, Tyler picks up. She’s a tiny redhead who fits under his arm and Daddy winks at him when they leave. Tyler is not as drunk as he’d like to be, the room isn’t spinning and the girl’s smile isn’t quite hazy enough yet, but he figures he can get through this. 

He doesn’t see the look Jamie gives them when they walk out of the bar. 

Tyler thinks the girl’s name is Ashley. She’s very pretty in an average kind of way and she gets on her knees for him as soon as they walk in the door. Tyler’s not hard all the way, but she gets him there fast and dirty with lots of spit and moaning. Her eyes are bright when she looks up at him, but they’re a smooth shade of blue instead of hot chocolate brown like Jamie’s. Tyler closes his eyes against it and when they make it into the bedroom Tyler pins her wrists above her head and stares down at the tallies that lay there; there are five. Tyler wonders why she’s with him if some of them are black. He always thought the point of black tallies were so you never doubted if someone loved you. Tyler still hasn’t looked at his wrist since it started burning earlier on the ice. He doesn’t want to see how he fell in love with the same man twice, so he fucks Ashley instead. 

“We should do this again,” she grins and scribbles her number on a takeout napkin with a pen she pulls from her purse. 

“I’ll call you,” Tyler nods as he walks her to the door when the Uber pulls up. He presses a kiss to her lips for good measure. “To give you something to think about on the way home.” Tyler winks. 

Ashley laughs and pulls the door open to the car, “Oh, I’ll remember.” 

And then she’s gone. 

Tyler throws the napkin away as soon as he’s inside. His skin is crawling. He wants a shower and to climb into bed with his dogs and not wake up in the morning. His method of dealing with how dirty he feels is pouring himself two fingers of the Russian vodka Val got him, the kind that leaves his eyes watering, and swallowing it down as fast as he can. 

“Fuck,” Tyler swears, coughing. He pours himself another glass and takes it with him to the bathroom. 

The shower he subjects himself too is so hot it makes his skin itchy and red. He uses a fourth of the bottle of bodywash and scrubs with his washcloth so hard his skin feels raw when the water hits it. At least he feels clean now. 

When he climbs out and dries off, he gulps down the second glass of vodka. It’s just as awful as the first. 

He looks down at his wrist then, because he’s drunk enough he thinks he can handle it. The mark on his wrist is black. He must be hallucinating. 

\--- 

In the morning the mark is still black. That night they lose to Toronto, but at least it’s not a shutout. Jamie acts like nothing has changed, he acts like they’re still just best friends, like Tyler hasn’t acquired a black mark and isn’t having an early twenties crisis. Maybe Jamie hadn’t seen it, maybe Jamie didn’t know that it was there, didn’t look at his wrist for the same reason Tyler didn’t used to. It’s too painful to have a constant reminder he was always going to be alone. 

Tyler doesn’t understand how Jamie couldn’t know when it felt like Tyler was on fire. 

Tyler felt like he was on fire because he has MHS - Mark Hypersensitivity. Kari is the one who tells him in narrow eyed English while Tyler blathers on about “Maybe this is what Hell feels like.” Kari also has MHS; it’s rare, the feeling of molten lava being poured into your body when a mark comes in. It’s non genetic, caused by chromosomal mutation that happens in the womb, a programing glitch somewhere that tells the receptors in your brain to fire off pain signals when a mark manifests. The whole marks manifesting process is a little iffy itself, science wise. Only two percent of the population have MHS, so Tyler is lucky that Kari doesn’t think he’s crazy when he finds him in still sitting in at his locker twenty minutes after everyone has cleared the room out nearly a month after the mark turned black. Tyler didn’t cry, but it was close. 

“Not worry, Segs,” Kari pats his leg awkwardly. Tyler can see a sleek row of tallies along his wrist. The last is black and Tyler doesn’t want to know how much that must have hurt. “Get use to, maybe. Put ice on, like bruise.” 

Tyler doesn’t want to put ice on it because he never wants to feel like this again. If he could promise himself that he would never fall in love again he would, but he’s tried that once already and it hasn’t gotten him too far. He’s still hopelessly in love with Jamie Benn and his big cow eyes and those stupid thighs that Tyler wants to get between. And that’s also a new thought, feeling sexual towards someone without wanting to claw his skin away from the muscle, without feeling gross and repulsed. He wants to kiss Jamie more places than just his lips and maybe that’s the real problem he’s having right now. Tyler is twenty three years old and he doesn’t know how to deal with these stupid sexual feelings. 

\---

When they make it out of the first round of the playoffs and into the second, Jamie goes on a walk with Tyler and the dogs. Tyler didn’t invite him, but he’s there anyway, standing so close that their shoulders brush as Marshall and Cash pull them along.

“What’s up with you lately? I know you’re kinda bummed you didn’t get to play most of the first round, but it’s not your fault you got slashed with a skate.” Jamie’s eyes are wide and his hands are in his pockets and Tyler’s heart is going to burst from his chest. 

Everything is blurring together, green grass and blue sky and brown dirt and furry dogs. His chest hurts and he can’t breathe and he thinks he sitting down but his head and spinning and nothing seems right. The air is too thick and it’s not that hot outside in Dallas yet but his shirt is sticking to his back and maybe his eyes are closed but maybe they’re not and --

“Tyler. Tyler, hey. Can you breathe with me?” The dogs leashes are wrapped around Jamie’s wrist and his palm is cupping Tyler’s cheek and there’s a black tally that doesn’t belong to Jordie laying there. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Tyler chants, trying to back away from Jamie but he still can’t breathe right and his chest still hurts. 

“You’re having an anxiety attack, Ty. C’mon, breathe with me, okay?” Jamie’s voice is soft and imploring and Tyler wants to melt into it when he shouldn’t because this isn’t going to go well. He knows it’s not going to go well. 

“What’s wrong, Ty? This can’t all be about hockey.”

His fingers are careful as they reach out, slim as they wrap around Jamie’s wrist and turn it so the marks are facing upwards. Tyler swipes his thumb across the marks and shivers; he hates that it’s there. It feels wrong and it feels like pain. 

“I’m sorry,” Jamie whispers and pulls his arm back, cradling it to his chest. “I know you didn’t want this.” 

Tyler frowns. Of course he doesn’t, but how does - “How do you know that?” 

“When the mark came in it was black. I don’t know how long yours was red, but you never told me. And I’ve looked at your wrists, Ty, before. You barely have black ones. You barely even have marks.”

“They’re not real.” 

_What are you doing, Tyler?_

“What?” Jamie’s nose wrinkles and he still looks so sincere, media face with open eyes and an expression that could flood the ocean. His media face isn’t a facade, that’s just pure Jamie. 

Tyler sighs and glances up at Jamie who’s crouching in front of him, concerned for his wellbeing and only wanting to understand him. Tyler aches, he wants to fall into Jamie and drown in his warmth. 

“They’re not real,” he repeats, hands shaking as he unlatches the Rolex on his right wrist and removes it so Jamie can see the real mark there. “This is yours.” 

“I don’t -” Jamie squeezes his eyes closed for a moment, opening them again to brush his thumb across the black tally. “I don’t understand.”

Tyler is ashamed. His face lights up bright red and he ducks his face into Jamie’s chest. He doesn’t know when they got so close, but he loves it. He loves being able to be this close to another person and not want to scream. 

“I didn’t have any marks when I can’t to Dallas, so I put them there’re myself.” 

“Tyler..” Jamie looks sad and Tyler is sorry. He’s sorry and he doesn’t know why, but something still hurts inside him. 

“I’’m sorry.” 

“Ty, you never have to be sorry.” Jamie pulls Tyler fully into his chest and the dogs join in, their awkward little family, and Tyler can feel something loosen in his chest. “I’m sorry you were alone all those years before we met.” 

“You’re here now, though. Right?” Tyler is hopeful, tipping his head up to look into Jamie’s eyes. 

“I’m here,” Jamie nods and when he leans down to kiss Tyler, Tyler doesn’t panic. He leans into it, hands curling around Jamie’s massive biceps and he tastes like hope. 

“You’re here,” Tyler agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Come join me on [tumblr](http://chicago-runsonduncan.tumblr.com)!


End file.
